


the fall of a royal head

by ruedesgres (smithens)



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Canon Era, M/M, Moral Dilemmas, Permanently Incomplete Work, Sexy Frev RP, Sexy Leg Massages
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:54:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27767845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smithens/pseuds/ruedesgres
Summary: Jean Prouvaire attempts to bring revolutionary praxis into the bedroom.
Relationships: Combeferre/Jean Prouvaire
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9





	the fall of a royal head

**Author's Note:**

> none of the puns work in french btw. kink bingo feudal ties. this isnt finished and never will be. no actual sex, sorry

"Tell me about this inscription," said Combeferre.

"Jeannot is me."

"Of course — but the Marquis?"

"My uncle, on my mother's side. He gave it to me as something to cherish, you know, something that I could actually read in my own language when my mother was forcing upon me bits and pieces of _Qianjiashi_ , and I have since adored him for it. You hold in your hands my very first book of French poems, so do not make those eyes at it… Ah! I see what you are really asking! Oh, Combeferre. Uncle inherited land and the rank with it. Father did not have a title so much as a great amount of money and connections. So you see, I am in line for nothing else but shares and property, though only a fool would name me a fiduciary — and my father is not a fool."

"Well!"

With one hand Combeferre removed his spectacles and rubbed at them with his kerchief, then replaced them.

He turned the book over and back again.

"Jean Prouvaire," he continued, placid, "may I be so bold as to enquire where, precisely, your family resided during the years of the Revolution?"

"Oh, here and there, until '96 or so," replied Jean Prouvaire. "The house in Paris was sold. My mother and father had most pressing business with the trading offices in Macau; my uncle was off in Constantinople. We have a summer house in Aix. It is that summer house where I was raised, when all was said in done, but we've one in Linz, also, veritably the reason I've my other aunts and uncles and cousins with necks intact. Is it terrible of me to be glad of it all?"

He spoke with his usual sincerity: it was a legitimate question, and one he clearly had before pondered. Such, really, was the way of Jean Prouvaire, who occupied himself with questions of all sorts, whether his answers would in the end pertain to him or not. It was that inquisitiveness which had drawn them together: Combeferre, philosophical, Jean Prouvaire, poetic.

The lamp flickered.

Combeferre seated himself upon the divan and, after lifting Prouvaire's legs at the calves and then repositioning them upon his lap, began to massage Prouvaire's ankles. "It is not up to me to decide," he said finally. 

For some moments they remained like that, Prouvaire sprawled in all directions as Combeferre rubbed his palm upon his ankle bones, the arches of his feet. Very occasionally Prouvaire would stiffen and giggle, and Combeferre would make a silent note of it, watching for signs of withdrawal or discontent and continuing on when there were none. Eventually, however, he stopped, and settled for gently resting his hands upon Prouvaire's shin, ignoring the tingling in his own thighs from the weight of his friend's legs.

"Then," said Jean Prouvaire finally, "to whom is it up?" 

Combeferre did not immediately understand; he shifted a little in his seat.

"God, perhaps." 

Prouvaire made a contemplative noise.

"You are all too familiar with the concept of divine judgment, Jean Prouvaire, perhaps more than you ought be — do not feign timidity."

"I am timid."

"You are not."

In reply, Jean Prouvaire parted Combeferre's legs with his heel, and the touch felt like setting one's hand upon a pincushion, or a cactus. Combeferre looked over at him. "Indisposed," he repeated dryly. 

"No longer. I've changed my mind."

"Maybe I have, also."

"I don't think that's so."

It wasn't.

"All this talk of judgment," continued Jean Prouvaire, tossing his head back. He let his arm fall from across his belly to hang over the edge of the divan, and the closure of his banyan went with it. 

Feigning inattention, Combeferre repeated, "all?"

"Is it more shameful to be grateful for the sparing of heads or to endorse the loss of them? Ought I kiss the cheeks of my aunts and uncles while dismissing the loss of the other peers? — oh, that was not a pun, mind."

It was.

"How can I vow that the spirit of '93 pulses through my veins when I do not begrudge my family an escape from it?"

At this Combeferre began to wonder if the suggestion of intimacy was merely a passing fancy, if Jean Prouvaire had in the brief time since fallen once more into pondering — a mood from which he was not easily roused. His thoughts were quelled quite suddenly, however, when Prouvaire tugged his feet nearer to himself, parting Combeferre's legs further.

"I should like a trial."

"A trial!"

Prouvaire hoisted himself up and slung his arm around Combeferre's shoulders.

"Between you and I."

"Jean Prouvaire, no man with a good conscience could see fit to lay blame upon you for actions which occurred before you were born; moreover, no matter the rationality or reason of your emotions you've a right to them. If men be free to think, they ought be free, too, to feel. In the eyes of some it would be a greater crime to disavow your family than to forgive them."

"In yours?"

Combeferre sighed. "It is not a criminal act to love one's blood relations."

"No, no. But you would have denounced your own mother before the Committee of Public Safety, had you reason, and I would have run off with mine to the South China Sea."

By accident Jean Prouvaire had hit a nerve: the way in which Combeferre seemed to freeze beneath his arm, the way his legs tensed, and too his silence made that clear. He cringed at himself and began to lightly rub his fingers along Combeferre's neck and collarbone.

"My mother," said Combeferre, a little steely, "is the rep — "

"Yes. I am dearly sorry."

After having been tempted to for a long while, Combeferre picked up Prouvaire's feet and pushed them off of him.

"It is — I — I do ask myself that question. If I should have been born in, say, in '71, and brought up much the same — well, of course it would not truly be much the same, but if I imagine I found myself a republican, despite my tutelage, as now…"

"History is rife with men who held conviction in higher regard than upbringing, Jean Prouvaire." 

* * *

"You, the public prosecutor of a revolutionary tribunal — "

"Fouquier-Tinville?!"

"— a _provincial_ tribunal, and I, accused of offences treasonous to the Republic, of crimes against the state."

"That is hardly realistic."

"Of course, for it is merely play! there will be neither judge nor jury," continued Jean Prouvaire, unflummoxed, "nor witnesses, perhaps you are not a prosecutor but an agent, and I a man — a writer — a _poet_ , lounging one night in my bedchamber, or perhaps I have visited a beautiful yet unfamiliar house at the behest of a very dear, very well-born fellow —"

"Jean Prouvaire, I hope you are not asking me to pretend that you are André Chenier while you fuck me."

"I suppose I am not," he replied, looking suitably chastised, and then quickly added, "but I _am_ asking you to pretend that I require political suasion."


End file.
